picture of the day

Geological Narratives
Jul
27, 2009

Where did
mountains come from?

For
centuries, the narrative of choice
was, “God did it—catastrophically.”

In 1785,
James Hutton replaced that narrative
with the principle of “the present
is the key to the past.” God became
optional, and the story became more
intricate, if less dramatic:
Processes that we witness today,
acting gradually and uniformly over
millions of years, deposited
sediment in layers on the bottoms of
oceans and seas. The layers of
sediment solidified into strata of
rock; the strata were uplifted into
peaks and eroded into valleys; and
the detritus was recycled into
sediment.

In 1978, Luis Alvarez interrupted
the narrative of “gradual and
uniform” with a few episodes of
drama: An asteroid, perhaps several,
had collided with the Earth and
caused mass extinctions. This twist
in the plot violated the integrity
of gradual and uniform quotidian
processes. The collision of Comet
SL-9 with Jupiter in 1994 seemed to
bring cosmic collisions within the
purview of “the present,” but the
“gradual and uniform” story line had
been irreparably broken. Geology
again became catastrophist, but this
time without God among the
characters.

God had been the mechanism, the
energy, in the old catastrophism.
The new catastrophism was entirely
mechanical and suffered from the
lack of an adequate mechanism.
Impacts could not account for the
growing number of facts that were
now interpreted as catastrophic: not
only craters but also extinctions,
lava floods, global soot, and
climate anomalies. Time spans were
shortened, and actions had to be
more vigorous. Mechanical processes
lacked sufficient vigor.

Recognizing that the universe is
composed mostly of plasma introduced
a new character to the plot. Plasma
is electromagnetically active, and
the forces can exceed the strength
of mechanical forces such as gravity
by trillions of orders of magnitude.
Plasma processes can provide
practically unlimited vigor. Strata
can be deposited in days or hours
instead of centuries or
millennia—and the layers need not be
horizontal. Craters and canyons can
be excavated in similarly short
periods, and the debris can be
lifted into space or pulverized,
sorted, and deposited elsewhere.

Studies in comparative mythology
have identified the ancient gods as
planets and the thunderbolts that
they hurled at each other and at the
Earth as plasma discharges. We see
similar phenomena today at larger
scales throughout the universe in
the jets and flares of stars and
galaxies. At a planetary scale, we
have the possibility of explaining
geological formations and biotic
successions with vigorous and
fast-acting electromagnetic
mechanisms that incorporate bodies
of evidence excluded from presently
accepted theories.

One such body of evidence is the
collection of legends and myths from
around the world. A number of
legends have been confirmed as
accurate reports of geological
events, such as the Aboriginal
legend that located several peaks
which are now under water off the
coast of Australia.

If legends about locations are
accurate, legends about orogeny
can’t be dismissed out of hand
merely because they seem unfamiliar
with respect to the consensus
narrative. Many legends describe the
appearance of mountains on
previously different terrain.

Dwardu Cardona documents many of
these legends in his book
Flare
Star. Native tribes in North
America, for example, relate that
the Cascades now occupy what had
been a grassy plain. Were those
mountains electrically deposited
during the catastrophe that ended
the Pleistocene Ice Age? Their
present altitude is dated to that
epoch. Were they deposited as dust
and fused into rock, in similarity
with electrical painting technology?
Was the process similar to the
formation of sand dunes? No
experiments have been conducted to
determine if electric mechanisms
play a part in dune dynamics,
despite the discovery of large
electric fields in dust devils.

As the difficulties and
contradictions in consensus
catastrophism grow more
unmanageable, theories of plasma
catastrophism grow more promising.
Because plasma phenomena are
scalable, the mechanisms of plasma
geology can be investigated under
controlled laboratory conditions,
something unavailable to “gradually
over millions of years” mechanics.
Theoretical, experimental, and
interpretive work has barely begun.
The field is wide open to
adventurous scientists.

Mel Acheson

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